DreamsI've been keeping a dream journal on a special Twitter account since I was 23 years old. You can read these raw forms, if you'd like: @IHadaDreamWhere. I'm going to be adapting 99 of them as microstories.

Saturdays (mezzofiction)

Missy’s MissionWith the help of a friend, a young woman searches a rogue planet for the rumored means of getting rid of her special time powers, since having them puts her in the crosshairs of a psychotic time traveling killer.

My name is Nick Fisherman III. It's not my real name, but that's not because I'm trying to hide from my former agency, or something. I named myself after someone I've known for most of my life, and he chose it in honor of his late best friend. I took up writing when I found myself failing 8th grade science, and realized I might never reach my dream of becoming a biochemist, a meteorologist, and a quantum physicist. I started developing my canon after a scouting trip to an island inspired what I thought would be my first novel. I founded this website upon the advice of many people, who told me I needed to get my work out there, and not wait for an agent to accept my manuscript. You can expect one new story every day. Weekdays are for microstories, which are one or two paragraphs long. They're usually only thematically linked, so you won't have to read one to understand another, but they do sometimes tell a combined story. Sundays are for my continuous longer story, The Advancement of Leona Matic, which I started in the beginning, and won't end until 2066. Saturdays are for long series, most of which take place in the same universe as Leona, and add to the larger mythology.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Microstory 529: What Happened to the Flowers?

Earlier this week, this year’s Fontane University graduates were ceremoniously walking down Fontane Hill, as is tradition. The symbolic idea behind this practice is to teach recent graduates one simple life lesson: that it’s hard. Walkers are encouraged to admire the beautiful flora on their way down, but to be careful, because the trek is treacherous. Most walkers lose focus on this rather quickly, and end up just concentrating on holding their balance. The school isn’t proud of the number of sprained ankles every year, but also notoriously assumes no responsibility. What they did not count on was how this particular ceremony would be different. There were more injuries this year than the last five years combined, because something was happening to the wildlife. Something that never had before, and cannot be explained.

According to numerous reports, the plants and flowers around the walkers were dying before their very eyes. They could see the petals wilt and turn to dust in a matter of seconds. This surprised enough people to send them tumbling down the rest of the hill, harming those who were too far along to have even noticed. The flora was dying and disintegrating in a somewhat predictable pattern...downwards, but not consistently enough to trace this bizarre turn of events to a source. Authorities initially believed it to be the result of some elaborate prank, but no substance known to man is capable of pulling something like this off. There was talk of a solar flare, underground gas pockets, and even human pheromones, but none of these comes close to being valid, let alone verified. Botanists and other scientists have already traveled to Fontane from all over the world, looking for answers. The Fontane Freesheet will update its readers as more information comes. For now, the question on everybody’s minds is, what happened to the flowers?